Skunk Killer

Until this past weekend, I was 0-fer for the year in my fishing expeditions.  Yes, that's right. 0-fer.  That would be zero fish caught in five or six outings.  But I have an excuse! No, I'm not a terrible angler, at least I hope not.  I have been steelhead fishing and I know next to nothing about steelhead other than they are hard to locate and catch.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

And after a number of painful skunks early in the year I was more than ready to go somewhere I know I can catch fish.  So I scheduled a trip back to Colorado to fish two places where I know I will catch quite a few fish.  My two places?  South Boulder Creek (if you read me regularly you had already guessed) and a quick two day trip up to the Yampa River outside Steamboat Springs.

South Boulder Creek, at least where I fish it, is the sort of place where you can catch something like 5-10 fish per hour.  At least that's my experience, probably because I've fished this quarter mile section of river something like 50 times.  It used to be my go to place in the summer most weekends when I didn't have another trip planned. The fish aren't huge, but there's a healthy mix of a million 6-10 inchers and a handful of 10-16 inchers if you know where to look.  Like this one.

The other bonus is it's an enjoyable hike in, the scenery is nice with some sheer cliffs, and it's usually fairly secluded, although on a weekend day you might run into another angler or two but it's otherwise rare.

I have to admit, though, I might be a bit of a simpleton.  It's more fun to me to go up here and catch 50 fish less than 10 inches in an afternoon, than to go up to Cheeseman canyon and hunt for lunkers and maybe get lucky enough to catch one or two 18-22 inchers.  Are you with me or are you totally against me?

Unfortunately, I didn't get away as early as I had hoped Friday morning, and I had to be back to Denver by 2 to gather people to head to the Yampa so my fishing outing here was a mere 2-3 hours.  I still had fun and caught fish.  Anyway, I will leave you with some more pics from my outing and longing for a future post on the Yampa trip.  But a quick tease:  last time I went there I claimed it was the best day of fishing I had ever experienced.  And this time I managed the elusive quadrupta two days in a row!  I might have made up that word, but after the post you will know what it means.

First fish of the day

 Yes, I rocked the autoreel for a little while.

Buster wants to fish

This is a shout out to all my fans in Colorado.  I'm coming in this weekend for a fishing trip, and have a morning open for some pre-fishing fishing.  Assuming flows remain reasonable I'm thinking of hitting up my old home waters on the South Boulder Creek.  Friday morning till noonish.

Anyone care to join me?

Here's what a typical morning looks like:

Pond or Puddle

My parents are planning to move back to their original hometown in central Missouri for retirement.  With that goal in mind they recently acquired some land and are planning to build a house.  Pretty much all the land in the area is farmland or is surrounded by farmland.  This land is no different.  It's a little more rolling and wooded than some of the other land but it's generally similar.

When I was little, pretty much all our holidays (and a number of additional weekends) were spent down here with the extended family.  And every trip in which I could manage, there was some fishing involved.  When I was very little, the target was panfish and the medium was bobbers and worms.  As I aged I discovered that the more active pursuit of bass fishing was more enjoyable. Beyond that, there are also catfish and snapping turtles and certainly other creatures of the deep to chase.

With all this in mind, can you guess what my first question was when my dad told me they had picked out a plot of land?  Of course, it was "does it have any ponds?"  The answer was "yes, two."  My retort:  "Woohoo!"  The existence of small farm ponds everywhere in the area is very nearly a given.  These things are little tear drops of the gods and are sprinkled everywhere.  Then I visited in person and saw the ponds and felt slightly disappointed.  They are quite small.  Not so small as to not hold fish, but small enough that at best they hold a bunch of palm sized (max) panfish and couple 8-14" mini bass.

What was worse was that the best place to put the house was too close to the smaller of the two ponds, so it had to go. But perhaps that was a blessing in disguise.  This small pond was probably at most 30 feet across; a glorified mud puddle.  My dad was doubtful there were any fish in there, I figured a few small panfish.  We were both wrong.  I don't know all the details, but a few pictures arrived in my email inbox this week.  That pond had been drained and the fish were collected.  Here are the two pics I received.  I hope my cousin doesn't mind making his debut on my blog.

A pretty small bass, but a bass.  Very positive.  But even more positive was the ridiculous sized carp for a pond this small.

No I'm looking forward fishing the slightly larger pond that's still there.  Who knows what lies within!

I'm also looking forward to convincing my parents to either make that pond bigger or to put in another bigger one with all kinds of great bass and carp habitat.

Ouch and Gross

One picture will say it all.

It actually looked a lot worse yesterday and felt even worse the day before.

My apologies for the non-fishing related post and for the gross picture of my foot.

Spring Cleaning

First I must remind you what my current dry fly box looks like.  Or did look like before I did a little spring cleaning.  Here it is:

It came a little early, but I got what I publicly demanded for my birthday.  Or at least one of the many things I asked for.  And now it looks much more organized.  The two downsides now are 1) that it actually now appears like I have fewer flies, and 2) I have more space to fill so I need to tie some more!

Trouts and other fishes, here I come.

Oh, and thanks LM&M for the gift.

Dilemma

So I've gone back to tying flies this past week. I haven't really sat the at the tying desk for quite some time other than a few instances to tie up some steelhead monstrosities.  And then only because I had donated most of my supply to the riverbed.  But the air is again beginning to whisper about good times in Montana.  Fish to be caught, sun rays to soak up (weather permitting), good company to be had, and all that good stuff.  That air has blown me back to my fly tying desk.  Not because I'm in desperate need of flies for a looming trip, but because I'm excited about a somewhat distant trip and tying up some flies is one fun way to release that excited anxiety.

The problem, however, that tying flies has created is that my new creations don't fit in my dry fly box.  You would think that means I'm well stocked, but you would be wrong.  My dry box is pretty small and there are a lot of bugs in the world that trout eat.  Sure, eight and a half times out of ten I have what I need.  But those last one and a half times of ten are monumentally frustrating.  Those are the times where there are fish surfacing all around me, eating fly after fly in the darkening half-light of the encroaching dusk but refusing my offering time and time and time and time and time again.  That's what I'd like to be prepared to avoid.

This brings me to a dilemma.  I have way too many dry flies to fit in my fly box, but the whole point is to have all these patterns on hand.  

There are two possible solutions.  One would be to spend countless days on the water and drastically improve my angling skills to the point where I only require a couple patterns.  The other would simply require I acquire a new and larger fly box.  One of those is easy and one is hard.  Can you tell which path I intend to follow?

My birthday is coming up.

Hint hint.

Creep-meisters

Last week I was expecting a package and wanted to have it left at my front door. In order to do this I went to UPS's website and signed up for an account. That's when things got a bit creepy. To my knowledge I have never given certain bits of personal info to UPS, yet info they already have!

I'm not usually overly concerned about Big Brother or the lack of privacy we all suffer from these days, but this did leave me feeling just a bit exposed.